Friends
by ardavenport
Summary: Chakotay goes to pick up his captain and discovers that she's met a friend.
1. Chapter 1

**FRIENDS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 1**

"We've only got fourteen replacements. I don't know what we're going to do when we run out of them."

Commander Chakotay heard Captain Janeway's voice as he came around the corner of the empty bar and a prickly green and orange potted bush. Or perhaps it would have been blue and red in normal lighting; the room's savory yellow glow favored on this planet distorted all colors to the Human eye. Chakotay's eye immediately found the familiar shape and lines of a Starfleet uniform, back to him, in a low backed chair at the bar.

"I'm sure those multiplex phased thingies that the Gorzats use would do. That-that Neelix person you know, he would know about them. Or we could go out and get some right now," consoled the woman with tall, pinkish-blondish hair sitting next to the captain. She patted the red shoulder of Janeway's uniform and then put a jeweled hand to her painted mouth. "Oh, but they're a bit big to carry around."

"I don't know." Approaching, peering over her shoulder, the top of her hair, Chakotay saw Janeway nudge an empty saucer toward an incredible wreckage of cups and glasses, plates and leftovers spread out on the bar before the two women.

The other woman leaned toward her, clasping her arm with a hand that appeared to have two thumbs and two fingers. "It's only stabilizers, dear. Oh!" Her green-tinted eyes fell upon Chakotay, now standing just behind Janeway. At least he thought they were green; they might easily have been blue in normal light. "You must be for Janeway, here."

"Captain?" Her head tilted toward him.

"Oh, Commander." She looked past him for a moment before actually seeing him and then brushed away a stray lock that had come unfastened from the rest of her brown hair. The normally reddish hue of it had gone orange, her skin yellowed along with everything else in the room. Chakotay had been going in and out of greenish and yellowish and whitish illumination for hours and he couldn't be sure if her color were good or bad.

The other woman, bracelets and belts jingling on her gold and silvered clothes, dragged another chair over for him. "Sit with us." Janeway looked at her companion, perplexed.

"How did you know he was here for me?"

"You're wearing the same thing, dear."

She patted her chest, rediscovering the black front of her uniform, the closure in the middle partially opened. "Oh." Janeway recovered from this serendipity, "Oh, Seepa, this is my first officer, Commander Chakotay. Commander, this is Seepa." Warily, Chakotay took a seat on the inflated cushion, their chairs forming a triangle at the bar. None of the few other patrons in the main room sat near them.

"Delighted, dear." She presented both of her hands to him, rings and jewels adorning all four of her fingers and all four of her thumbs. He lifted his hands, palms up and touched the tips of his fingers to the ends of her pointed, nailless digits and nodded his head toward her. A powerful floral scent wafted from her toward him. Swaying toward him, she pressed her palms to his, the ends of her opposing fingers and thumbs barely curling around the sides of his much larger hands. She narrowed her large, painted eyes at him. He really wasn't sure if she actually had eyelashes cemented together by makeup or a large, dark flap on her eyelids. Her skin was surprisingly firm and warm, almost hot and his own skin tingled where they made contact. Her teeth were pinkish-orange.

Chakotay lowered his hands. Seepa admired him back, his face, the top of his graying black hair and the tattoo at his temple.

He addressed Janeway. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Captain, but we haven't been able to raise you on your communicator."

"You haven't?" Janeway patted her chest again, the off-tone warble of the her communicator pin indicating that it was indeed not functioning.

"Oh, is that a link of some kind?" Seepa exclaimed loudly in the low-level hubbub of the bar. No one else in the place noticed. "I'm sorry, dear, it's me. I didn't know you had anything like that on you. It's the force field; I'm always getting complaints from people about it. It's so hard to go out anywhere sometimes," she complained with long, generous vowels.

"Of course. I didn't even think of it." Janeway extended her hand to her overdressed friend. "Even a minimal subspace distortion like yours would interfere with a communicator and then with the unusual energy densities of your containment field..." She turned back to Chakotay. "You probably couldn't even find the comm signal," she finished, as if Chakotay had just found a lost sock instead of a missing starship captain.

"We have been asking around about you for the past few hours," the commander admitted. He tapped his own comm badge and got the same non-functioning chirp.

"Oh, it's all right." Seepa raised her hands with more bracelet jingling. "I can fix it." She closed her eyes, her gold-pink, painted lids outlined in a deep rose red. Chakotay thought she looked like a gypsy mystic with tall, pale, pinkish hair. She let out an exaggerated sigh and her eyes popped open again. "That should do it. So sorry about the inconvenience. It takes a little effort to restrain the effect and I am so, so lazy about it. Aaah!" She turned back to the discards on the bar. "I need something to eat."

She rummaged, scattering dishes and crumpled plastic, food rinds and crumbs. Janeway started to help her. She shifted in her chair, ignoring the rubbing noises the cushion made. Every chair that Chakotay had seen on this planet had an inflated seat, preferred for comfort, but obviously the natives didn't know about the noises that Humans thought of when sitting down in them. He checked his comm badge again; this time the answering chirp sounded right.

"Oh look!" Seepa held up a small, clear dish holding a crusty peach colored mound in amber syrup. "There's one left." She held it out to the captain who leaned away from it.

"No, I couldn't possibly eat another bite, please."

"Oh Janeway, you've hardly had a _thing_ besides lunch. What about you Commander." He started to refuse, but Seepa suddenly remembered something.

"Oh, wait." She retrieved a green bottle from the bar and poured the last of its contents into the bowl. "Might as well finished this off, too."

"No, thank you." Chakotay held up a hand to ward off the antiseptic, fruity smell that assaulted him.

"All right." With admirable dexterity, Seepa used an eating paddle to shovel it into her mouth.

"How many of these have you had, Captain?" Chakotay had already surmised Janeway's condition and now he'd confirmed the source.

"Oh," she thought for a moment. "Two."

"No, four, dear."

"Really?"

"Of course." Not a spot, smudge or smear anywhere on her, Seepa polished off the last of the dish. "There were eleven of them, and I know I had six, plus this one, so you must have had the other four." Janeway shrugged back and Seepa put the empty dish back; it clattered among the other remains.

"I see."

"It was flambe," Janeway explained back to him, "but after the second one, the waiter didn't want to do it anymore."

"Well, we did almost set the bar on fire," Seepa grumbled.

"I see," Chakotay repeated, finding it very, very hard not to smile. Then he raised an eyebrow and smiled anyway. Janeway's brows lowered.

"Are you implying something with that remark, Commander?"

"No, nothing." He shrugged. "I just thought it might be time to return to the ship."

"What? What?" Seepa butted in, noticing the expression of suspicion on Janeway. The captain straightened in her chair. The noisy seat cushion spoiled her pretense of dignity.

"You are implying something, Commander," Janeway pronounced, her voice as crisp and cutting as when she was sober, her whole face frowning back at him.

"And I don't like it."

He shrugged again, caught in mid-implication. "I would suggest that you avoid straight lines at the moment, Captain." She folded her arms before her and stuck her angular chin out at him.

"Janeway." Seepa leaned into the confrontation. "You didn't say anything about the food."

"There wasn't anything toxic. Well," Janeway amended, "not exactly, just...recreational." Her shoulders dropped, her confession mellowing the usual edge to her tone. The room was too warm, the collar of her shirt too close to her skin. She did not like that smile on Commander Chakotay's roundish face, his dark, solemn eyes looking too wise and amused. She'd seen ethyl alcohol on the list of biological cautions on the menu but now it seemed that she'd had been more careless about it than she'd thought.

Really?" Seepa patted her arm. "Then I'm delighted for you, dear. I haven't been able to get loaded in centuries." She looked about the room, past Chakotay to the windows and the spaceport beyond. "Where is this ship of yours anyway?"

"It's in orbit." Having gotten over her confession, Janeway waved her hands. There just wasn't anything she could do about until the got back to the ship where she could hopefully retire in private after showing Seepa around. She brushed at the stray hairs tickling her neck and getting under her turtleneck collar. And fix her hair. "We'll have to beam aboard." She tapped her communicator. "Janeway to _Voyager_."

"Ensign Kim here. Captain we've been looking for you," Kim's clearly relieved voice answered.

"Yes, Ensign. Commander Chakotay found me. Three to beam up."

"Beam?" Seepa asked. They sat there. A grumbling set of armor plated, or perhaps scaled, customers on the other side of the room paid their bill and got up from their table to leave.

"Janeway to _Voyager_. What's the problem?"

"Uh, Kim here, Captain. We're having trouble getting a transporter lock on you. Are you standing near a force field?"

"Yes, dear, she is," Seepa answered, leaning over to the silver and gold communicator badge on Janeway's chest. "What's a transporter lock?"

"Shhhh!" Janeway waved her back. "Seepa can't use the transporter." She leaned toward Chakotay.

"Perhaps, Captain, Seepa could come aboard later?" Chakotay leaned closer to her, his voice low, the cushion of his chair making squirching noises.

"No," Janeway refused. "No, she has to meet B'Elanna. Seepa can...bend space with just her mind. Her whole body has been modified for space travel, her nervous system is linked directly to sub-space." She gestured, eyes wide, as she related this news to her first officer. "She has a ship, but it doesn't have any engines. She can generate gravity fields that let her travel at multi-warp speeds, just by thinking about it." The floral scent hit him again, and the commander realized that it was coming from Janeway this time.

"Oh, I do have orbital thrusters. You don't think I'd go through the bother of pushing myself through a planet's gravity well, do you?" Seepa corrected with a metallic tinkling wave of the arm.

"Captain?" Kim's forgotten voice came back to them.

"Oh, Ensign." Janeway bit her lip. "You'll have to send a shuttle craft for us."

"A shuttle, Captain?" Kim answered. Chakotay opened his mouth to object, but Janeway kept going.

"Yes Ensign, as soon as you can. Oh." She put her hand to her lips, her gaze going to the bar's windows and the wide expanses of the Zabos Spaceport outside. "Where're they going to land? Um, Ensign, send it to where they put Neelix's ship. We'll meet it there."

"Um, aye Captain," Kim's voice hesitated. "Uh, Captain, are you feeling all right?"

"Me? Yes. I'm fine, Ensign. Just send the shuttle," she ordered, her voice momentarily returning to its usual authority. "Janeway out." She slapped her communicator and reached out to Seepa. "We'd better go."

"Uh, Captain," Chakotay caught Janeway's elbow as they rose. She teeter a bit after standing, but recovered.

"Oh, we can't forget our things." Standing as well, Seepa pointed to a white bag at the foot of their chairs. The women went to pick it up and Chakotay saw that the one bag was actually three. Seepa came up with one and Janeway had a double armload.

"If you'll allow me, Captain?" he offered.

She didn't understand his meaning until he actually lifted the bags from her. One of them was heavy, filled with bottles and plastic containers. The other contained shiny fabric and small angular things that he could feel poking him through the thin plastic. Seepa handed her bag to him as well, which was fortunately light; more fabric and angular things.

Janeway let him have the bags and with a huffing exhale she headed for the door. "Captain, can I speak with you for a moment, alone?" The Maquis officer did not care for the idea of bringing this person and her personal force fields on board _Voyager_.

"What?" She looked up at him and brushed at the loose strands of hair around her face. "Tell me on the way."

She pushed her way out the door, into the green-tinted, sunlight, leaving the confines of the bar for the warm, breezy outdoors. Then she halted, squinting and trying to remember where Neelix had parked his small ship. She'd finally gotten used to the yellow light in the bar and now everything was green; the light, the sky, the paved landing areas and the ships scattered about in the distance. Janeway pointed and marched into the bilious glare, Chakotay trailing after the two women. An occasional hum or buzz and loud rushing of air washed over the paved field as ships rose and dropped from the sky.

Janeway's mobility seemed unimpaired, though a bit flat-footed. Seepa, belts and bracelets jingling, strolled with her, occasionally extending a hand for a friendly pat on the shoulder as they traversed the field. Most of the ships they passed were small with a few large, sub-light cargo carriers, the vast majority of the traffic being simple interplanetary craft that serviced the system's four inhabited planets. A few people waved and greeted Seepa, apparently a regular at the spaceport. Their trip lengthened as they stopped several times at the foot of some ships and at the doors of service buildings to chat. Seepa always introduced Janeway as the captain of her own ship. This accorded her some status with the locals—along with being friends with Seeps—and beaming, she accepted their deference graciously.

Chakotay hefted his bags. First officers apparently didn't merit any status at all.

As they made yet another stop, one huge, oily being driving a cargo lifter suggested that they take Seepa's ship, but she waved the idea away with her jingling bracelets before her hand returned to Janeway's shoulder again; "Yorgal won't get the mess cleaned up until tomorrow." She waved as they moved on.

Chakotay followed right behind them, carrying their bags, his eyes hardly ever leaving Janeway as she chatted with her friend about the lift capacity of Seepa's ship. They seemed to have forgotten that he was even there, silently shadowing them. He watched Janeway's gestures, more exaggerated than usual, her smiles and slightly tipsy walk. The two women were eye-level with each other, though the top of Seepa's hair, now a pasty brown-pink in the green light, was as tall as he was. Her pantsuit had gone completely green-silver, all it's gold highlights having been lost when they exited the jaundiced bar.

He knew he should have been annoyed or even angry at the indignity, at Janeway's insensitivity, but he didn't see that there was much point to it. Technically he was in command while she was...impaired. Janeway and Seepa laughed over a joke about long particle strings and soup. He planned to haul the captain down to Sickbay when they got back to _Voyager_. In fact, Starfleet regulations demanded it for commanding officers, and Janeway, who was such an adherent to Starfleet regulations, wouldn't have any say about it. And, he had to admit to himself, he would enjoy doing it. Not even _Voyager's_ rigid security officer, Tuvok, could object. He would probably be obliged to help. The Maquis officer felt quite content to wait until then.

Chakotay did try to join in the conversation once when the origin of Seepa's space faring abilities came up while they stood with three, thin beings, potential customers for Seepa, who wanted her to take their cargo to the fifth planet of the system.

"So, your body was modified for space travel?" Chakotay asked.

"Oh, yes, it was horrible. Those Rashos who did it were wretched creatures. I'm glad they're all gone."

"They destroyed your world, did they not?" one of the potential customers—they were called Ee'Roos—asked in a baritone sing-song.

"No _we_ destroyed our world, and them, too, after we found out we'd been taken for fools. We didn't even have any space travel before the Rashos came. We were such rubes thinking it would be such a grand adventure. We didn't know we were the Rashos' test animals, who didn't have the decency to try it out on themselves first." Bracelets jingling, she waved off the bad memory. "All those people coming and going all the time, after too much of that, the whole system imploded from all the holes we made in real space."

"You seem to be taking it well," Chakotay noted her casual tone.

Seepa's expression shifted, subtlety. Her face seemed to hardly change, but all the frivolity went out of it; her whole body, the ever present jingling of metal bracelets and belts...stopped. She didn't freeze or tense up, but the cessation of sound, of her constant hand fluttering fixed his attention on her, on her face. "It happened a very long time ago."

Surprised by Seepa's sudden seriousness, Chakotay didn't answer back. Janeway seemed to already know about it, and her expression was all sympathy. The potential customers respectfully withdrew with promises to contact her when her ship was ready. Seepa then waved off the moment, her slender, silver clothed body glittering green highlights as she reverted back to airiness and they moved on.

As they approached the area where Neelix had parked the small ship that normally rested in _Voyager_'s hanger, Chakotay noticed that Janeway was tiring. Her chatter with Seepa about what sort of clothes one wore with a subspace force field faded to silence. She swiped often at the locks of hair that had come out from her bun in the warm, afternoon breeze, which only made the disarray worse. Even Seepa's shiny clothes were looking a bit rumpled, her stacked, pale hair a bit frazzled.

Chakotay readjusted his load again, the spoils of his captain's afternoon out lunching and shopping and buying things for the ship on Seepa's credit. A film of sweat covered his forehead. In front of him, Janeway stumbled on the pavement, but kept going.

**

* * *

- - - End Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**FRIENDS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 2**

Two Talaxians worried over a pile of parts at the open hatch of Neelix's ship. The greenish light colored their long, thin, reddish mohawk hair and the spots on their heads in unhealthy hues. Friendly, they smiled and welcomed the Starfleet officers and told them that Neelix had gone off to get more parts. They hugged Seepa. Chakotay repositioned his load again. Fortunately the chat didn't last longer than a few minutes, after which the Talaxian repair crew pointed them toward the empty landing areas.

The _Voyager_ shuttle appeared from above, neatly descended and parked ahead of them. Seepa stopped walking, dragging Janeway to a halt.

"Is that yours?" she asked, obviously impressed. "It's adorable, but I thought you said your ship was bigger than that."

"No, no, no." Captain Janeway shook her head, her loose strands of hair waving with the motion. "That's not _Voyager_, that's the shuttle. It's going to take us to _Voyager_."

"Well." Seepa patted Janeway's shoulder. "I had no idea you were so rich." Seepa sauntered up to the shuttle. The hatch opened and a tousled head met her.

"Captain?" Tom Paris, his red and black uniform as off-color as his comrades' in the chlorotic sunlight, looked past the silver-green clad woman to the two Starfleet officers behind her. Chakotay frowned at seeing the young hotshot. Paris was the sort of person who would amuse himself over Janeway's current situation.

"It's all right Mister Paris. This is Seepa. She's coming back to _Voyager_ with us," Janeway explained, her hand on Seepa's arm. Paris shrugged, stepped out of the shuttle and helped Seepa in. Seepa seized Paris's arm, patted him on the cheek and then complimented him on his youth as she passed him. Chakotay handed Paris his bags.

Janeway, hands on either side of the hatch, had trouble climbing up through. Chakotay caught her narrow hips when she started to fall back and shoved, and then went in after her. Paris, arms full and looking a bit stunned, got in last.

Paris dropped the bags behind Seepa's seat and took his seat in the pilot's chair. The captain had flopped into the co-pilot's seat, sighed heavily and, leaning her elbow on the controls, rubbed her forehead. Seepa sat behind Paris and admired the view through the wide forward and side ports, the tinting of the windows filtering out some of the green glare. Chakotay sat behind Janeway. After their long walk in green light, the inside of the shuttle seemed too red.

Paris stared at the captain, her eyes closed, her hair a mess, her elbow on the control panel.

"Uh, Captain, are you all right?"

Janeway's eyes snapped open. "What?"

"Uh, you look a little tired." Paris tapped the controls before him, initiating his pre-flight check.

"Oooooh!" Seepa exclaimed, surprising them.

"What is it?" Janeway asked.

"That is the smoothest gravity field I've ever felt." Seepa beamed and ran her hands up and down her silver jacket in a somewhat provocative fashion, her belts and bracelets tinkling with the movement. Tom Paris looked at her sideways.

"Glad you like it."

"You mean you can feel the difference between the internal and external gravity fields?" Janeway asked, fascinated.

"Oh, yes. Ordinary mass is just big lumps in space. But subspace mass...ooh!" She finally sighed, settling into the shuttle's artificial gravity. "I'm going to have a wonderful time on your ship."

"That's amazing." Obviously intrigued by Seepa's perception, Janeway leaned her arms on the back of her chair.

"Terrific," Paris replied. Then he sniffed. His head turned toward Janeway, and then to Seepa before he went back to his pre-flight.

"You can actually feel other energy fields. What are they like?" Janeway continued, oblivious to Paris's sarcasm.

"Oh, they just go right through you, dear." Seepa smiled blissfully, her rose-painted eyes glowing, her hands up, four fingers and four thumbs spread wide, the rings on them flashing. "You can just feel them washing over you, inside you. Building up and up." She inhaled, completely absorbed by her revelation. Then she sighed theatrically and dropped her hands. "Really dear, it's almost as good as sex."

"I'd have never guessed," Paris muttered. He clicked on the anti-grav thrusters to standby and turned a crooked smile toward the captain. Janeway still leaned on the back of her chair, her hands supported her chin, and still quite absorbed by Seepa's tale of force field ecstasy.

"Oh, yes," she patted Paris on the shoulder, "and do tell me if I'm interfering with anything. I really had no idea I was blocking that communication thing of yours, Janeway."

"That was you?" Paris nodded, his smug smile going back to the captain, who was looking just a little bit cross-eyed. "Uh, huh."

Chakotay cleared his throat, his dark eyes warning the lieutenant back to the controls. "I think we're ready to leave now, Captain."

Janeway looked at him, puzzled, and then suddenly realized that she was the one holding things up. She turned about, facing the forward ports of the shuttle and straightened the black front of her uniform.

"Proceed, Mister Paris."

Paris signaled Zabos Control and received permission to launch while Janeway leaned forward, noticing for the first time that the controls on her side of the shuttle were dark, while the lines and squares glowed active on Paris's side. Paris launched the shuttle, distracting her from asking about it. The spaceport disappeared below them and the bright, greenish sky turned to deep forest green and then black, an uneventful launch save for Seepa's 'ooohing' and 'aahing'.

"Seepa," Janeway finally complained.

"Oh, I'm sorry dear. I am making them uncomfortable, aren't I dear?" She rested a hand on Chakotay, who barely acknowledge it and Paris, who kept his back to her. Seepa turned to Chakotay.

"Oh, that is just lovely." She held a hand up to the lines of the tattoo on the Maquis commander's left temple, and though she didn't get within ten centimeters of touching him, he pulled his head back. "Is that permanent?"

"Yes," he answered. "It's a symbol of...my tribe." Janeway turned around in her seat, immediately curious.

"Would that there was something that would last like that on me, but I'd never be able to decide on what to get, or where to put it anyway," she rubbed a facial, and then a posterior cheek speculatively.

"What do you mean? You're wearing something." Janeway pointed at the rose colored outline of her eyes.

"Oh, they use this stuff to paint the hulls of ships, and it's damned difficult to get in small enough quantities. It's about all I can do." She sighed heavily, her bracelets jingling, her hand going to her unadorned, but perfectly smooth face, to her thin pinkish, but, unadorned lips. Now free of the planet's greens and yellows in the subdued shuttle light, Seepa proved to be all pink hair and silver clothes with her clinking jewelry silver or platinum. And her teeth matched her hair.

"Whatever you're wearing seems to work for you. We were wandering around out in the sun for _ages_ before we got here, and you look just fine." Janeway touched her own face.

"Oh, the pigment has a molecular bond genetically designed to adhere to human hair and skin."

"Well, then how do you ever get it off, dear?"

"There is an un-bonding agent for it. But it would just wear off by itself in a week or so anyway, if I didn't touch it up."

Janeway leaned closer to Seepa to allow her a better look. In the normal shuttle lighting Seepa's towering hair was pinker than Chakotay had feared, like cotton candy.

"Oh that would be marvelous if anyone could do anything like that for me; if I have any DNA left that is." She patted Janeway's hand. "You would not believe what I've tried."

Trapped in the pilot's seat, Tom Paris felt a sneeze coming on. Whatever cheap perfume that permeated Seepa and the captain was building up in the confines of the shuttle. He checked the sensors and the orbital trajectory display. Black space above and the bright day side of the planet below them, they were still ten minutes away from docking with _Voyager_. Next to him, Janeway and Seepa conversed about the sub-quantum level phase shift effect on the adhesion properties of organic pigment and why even the addition of magnetic spin wouldn't make it stick to Seepa's complexion. Paris had lost track of the conversation at the first quantum level. He had, himself, occasionally had used Starfleet's standard issue cosmetics to cover up the odd, temporary blemish, but he'd never considered their quantum chemical properties. Nor did he care to hear about them. Nor did it look like Commander Chakotay cared for it either. He sat back away from the conversation, his dark eyes flitting back and forth between the two women like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Paris turned back to his controls when those eyes landed a warning in his direction.

"Oh, I am just parched after that long walk," Seepa announced. She turned and began digging into one of the bags behind her seat, her numerous bracelets clinking all the way down to her wrists as she rearranged things. "Oh, Janeway, have one." She came up with a couple of small bottles and clicked the tabs, opening them.

"I think I'll have one, too," Chakotay smoothly intercepted the bottle between them.

"Oh, of course dear; there's plenty." Seepa went down again for another drink while the commander tested the drink. Fruity, flowery, watery, but not alcoholic, so far as he could tell. Janeway accepted another bottle from Seepa.

"Will you have one, too?"

"Uh," Paris peered down at Seepa's pale hand lying on the red shoulder of his uniform. The unnatural heat and prickly sensation of her penetrated down to his bare skin, "no thank you."

Seepa then produced packets of crackers and cookies and rubbery things that smelled like sweet cabbage. By the time they came within sight of _Voyager_, crumbs and discarded packets and bottles littered the shuttle though not a speck clung to Seepa.

The rear of the ship grew large. Paris exchanged landing protocols with Ensign Kim over the open com. Janeway sat alert in her chair, and Chakotay, sitting forward in his seat behind her, could just see the rapt expression on her face, something like Seepa's infatuation with the artificial gravity, but more dignified. The shuttle thumped to the deck and the hangar bay pressurized. Paris popped the hatch and Janeway let Seepa exit first. She followed, then Chakotay and finally Paris stepped out into the brightly lit, and well ventilated, un-perfumed hangar bay. Janeway had told _Voyager_ of who she was bringing—and Paris fully intended to get a copy of the comm log that would show Janeway leaning over the controls as she talked to the bridge_so a suitable reception awaited them.

"Captain?" Lieutenant Torres stared. She had never seen Janeway as anything less than the perfectly groomed Starfleet officer. Now, she was a mess. Little, frizzy wisps of hair, escaped from her bun, floated about her head. There were specks on the black front of her rumpled uniform. And the pink horror with her in the silverized pantsuit...

Ensign Harry Kim, standing next to Torres, gaped at what he saw. The he remembered to close his mouth. Commander Chakotay stood very close behind Janeway, as if she might need steadying.

"Captain." Lieutenant Tuvok solemnly stepped forward.

"Tuvok." Janeway put her arm around the all pink and silver woman next to her. "This is Seepa."

Seepa presented both her hands to the tall, dark, perfectly tidy Tuvok, who politely inclined his head toward her in return. Torres and Kim did the same when Janeway presented her friend to them. Then Seepa squirmed in place, flexing her fingers and thumbs, wiggling her hips, her bracelets and belts jingling.

"Oh, this is even better than the shuttle, dear." She inhaled deeply the recycled air of the open bay. "I can't wait to see the rest of this ship of yours. Where's this warp thing of yours?"

"Engineering. B'Elanna—"

"Uh, Captain." Commander Chakotay slid his large body between Janeway and Seepa and laid a hand on Janeway's upper arm. "I think we need to go to Sickbay first."

"Sickbay? Why? Is something wrong with the doctor?"

"No. There's nothing wrong with the doctor."

He continued to stand over her, intimately close, looking down at her. Then she recognized that look. It was the same look he'd given her in the bar when he'd all but accused her of having too much to drink. But now his expression was not amused, nor was he smiling.

Her temper flared. How _dare_ he. Here. And in front of her officers.

"Commander, we can discuss this later—"

"No, I think we need to do something about it now," he answered back quietly, serene as a wise man.

After following her all over the spaceport, carrying her bags, Chakotay had no intention of letting Janeway wander the ship as she was. Right now, it was a mild joke that she'd turned up harmlessly inebriated on the planet after the initial panic of finding her missing. But the commander was not going to suffer the embarrassment, for himself or for her, of having her make a fool of herself in front of the crew. If necessary, he intended to separate her from Seepa and have her beamed to Sickbay directly.

"Captain." Lieutenant Tuvok stepped forward, standing next to the first officer. Behind them, Seepa had actually stopped talking. Torres and Kim reluctantly witnessed the confrontation while Tom Paris watched with interest. "I believe that Commander Chakotay is correct, and that you should go to Sickbay."

Janeway stared up at the Vulcan, shocked, her anger forgotten. She looked from one pair of dark eyes to the other. Both Chakotay and Tuvok stood so their bodies almost touched her and that was very unusual for the reticent Tuvok. They blocked her, hiding her with their bodies; from Torres and Kim, who'd found other places to be looking anyway, from the few other crew who serviced the hangar bay, where they loitered away from the group of senior officers.

Icy cold formed in Janeway's stomach. They were doing exactly what they were supposed to; she was the one who'd screwed up. She suddenly felt aware of every little noise and echo in the hangar, the subliminal rumble of the ship. The warm green and yellow glows of her visit to the planet didn't seem nearly so fun now back aboard _Voyager_. And it had started out as such a nice afternoon...

The captain squared her narrow shoulders. What was done was done. There wasn't anything to do about it but go on. Commander Chakotay saw the stricken look in her eyes disappear; her body straightened.

"All right, let's get it over with then," she announced, determined, though Chakotay thought her expression comically belligerent with the little wisps of hair about her face and her chin jutting out. Chakotay and Tuvok stepped back.

"Y'know, dear, it's been ages since anyone's ever done that for me." They all turned to Seepa, all pink and silver, her noisy jewelry silent. Chakotay realized that this was the longest he'd ever heard her _not_ talking. Her rose-painted eyes half closed, her expression was very similar to that moment of seriousness he'd witnessed on the spaceport field on Zabos. She stepped forward and, leaning close, whispered loud enough for everyone else to hear. "I wouldn't say no."

Janeway lowered her head.

"Lieutenant Torres," Chakotay broke in; heads turned toward him. "Ensign Kim, the captain wanted Seepa to see Engineering. Would you and Mister Tuvok and Lieutenant Torres do the honors?"

Surprised, the two junior officers looked at each other before coming forward.

Tuvok's arched brows lowered. "Commander—"

"She is the captain's guest, Mister Tuvok," Chakotay cut him off. After listening to almost an hour of subspace field chatter from Seepa and Janeway, he knew that Seepa could at least be useful to _Voyager_.

"Are you sure, dear? It wouldn't be the first time I was asked to leave a party." Seepa folded her arms before her in a way quite similar to the captain.

Janeway had finished looking guilty and now cast her eyes up at her security chief as if to ask him whatever was the problem. Tuvok narrowed his eyes toward Seepa.

"Very well, Commander, Captain." Straight as a soldier, Tuvok stepped aside, nodding to Seepa to precede him. Seepa seized the Vulcan's arm as she went past and dragged him with her, Torres and Kim with her as they left.

Chakotay got a satisfying look at Tuvok's blank, wide-eyed stare, the most expression of shock that would ever get past the Vulcan's rigid emotional control, before the door closed behind them.

"Well, Tuvok should be able to handle her. I hope." Tom Paris sauntered up to the two senior officers, having also enjoyed the glimpse of shock on Tuvok's face. Chakotay, had to agree. Between them, Janeway smiled.

"Captain?" Chakotay extended his arm to the door. Janeway sighed heavily, her arms dropping to her sides.

"I don't suppose, Commander, that you'd mind if I just went to my quarters?"

Chakotay studied the air above him for a moment, his dark eyes thoughtful. "I suppose not," he finally concluded.

Janeway frowned her disapproval at this conclusion.

Behind her, Tom Paris speculated. "Don't I remember something about Starfleet regulations," he said over Janeway's head to Chakotay, "about when a starship captain is -"

"You don't need to quote regulations to me, Mister Paris," Janeway cut him off. Elsewhere in the bay, the faceless hangar bay crew rumbled some anonymous equipment moving noises.

"Don't we?"

The captain faced her first officer again. Older than Tom Paris, a touch of gray to his closely cut, thick black hair, he gracefully offered his escort. She ignored the mocking gallantry and marched past him to the door. Paris followed, a little disappointed. He'd wondered what would have happened if Janeway had been stubborn enough to need to be carried to Sickbay.

**

* * *

- - - End Part 2**

**F**


	3. Chapter 3

**FRIENDS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 3**

Chakotay eyed Paris as they left, unhappy that he was tagging along. But he had kept his mouth shut, mostly, in the shuttle, and it seemed safer that the two of them go with the captain, to discourage her from changing her mind. The three of them entered Sickbay a few moments later. The holographic doctor and Kes sat together in the doctor's small office.

Kes turned around at the hiss of the door and stood up.

"Doctor." Commander Chakotay nodded toward Janeway as the doctor approached. "The captain...isn't feeling well." Kes puzzled why Janeway would look so annoyed by this statement. It was strange to her; Janeway looked untidy, unhappy, but not unwell to the Ocampa. The doctor produced a medical scanner and Janeway followed it carefully as it passed before her.

"Hmm." The doctor raised his dark eyebrows as he examined the reading, the deep lines on his face exaggerating his evaluation. "Something you ate?"

"Something she drank," Paris muttered and paid for it with a poisonous glare from the captain.

"I see," the doctor agreed. Head level, Janeway glared up at the doctor's imperious bald dome. Next to him, Kes peered at the readings. He gestured graciously; Commander Chakotay stepped aside, leaving a clear path to the examination table. A touch at her elbow from Chakotay urged her toward it. She jerked away from it and stalked forward, all the excessive politeness around her making her angry. She laid her hands on the high biobed and suddenly suffered the indignity of the doctor helping her up. She did not feel very well, and she closed her eyes as she rolled onto her back. The medical monitors hummed and beeped quietly over her.

"Kes," the doctor cheerfully spoke directly over her, "ten cc's of obertalin."

Janeway squirmed as the doctor turned her head to the side and she felt the injection at her neck. Whoever had designed the holographic doctor had given him warm, gentle hands attached to an abrasive attitude. He briefly laid a palm on her forehead, flattening the loose strands of hair onto her damp skin. She brushed at the clinging strands. Her hand flopped down on the pillow next to her. The doctor was saying something. Flushed and tired, she wondered when she was supposed to start feeling better...

"Doctor, I don't understand." Kes, her delicate features unsure, looked up from the now sleeping patient to the doctor next to her. "Wouldn't paradexamine or tusylin have neutralized the alcohol in her system much faster?"

"Oh, yes they would," the Doctor agreed. "But it is considered sound medical practice not to relieve the symptoms of overindulgence too quickly, so as to provide the proper incentive for avoiding further indulgences in the future." He turned to the other officers. "I take it that the captain is not immediately needed elsewhere?"

"I guess not," Paris agreed, thinking that he'd always known that doctors were sadists.

"No," Chakotay also agreed. The doctor had followed the standard Starfleet de-toxification procedure...for a junior ensign returning from a first shore leave. Rank meant nothing to the ship's emergency holographic medical system. "Now if you don't mind I'm going to go to my quarters and freshen up." Still sweaty from the long walk in the green sunlight on the planet, he anticipated a good shower. "And then have a nice, quiet dinner." He nodded to everyone and then sauntered out.

"If you care to stay, Lieutenant." Paris's attention returned to the doctor. "We can go over the proper treatment for inebriation if you like. Just in case you need them." The doctor waved an arm over the captain's midsection, as if to display a trophy.

"Uh, I'd love to, but I'm still on duty. I have to get back to the bridge."

The doctor did not look overly disappointed as he left. On the bridge, Paris found Harry Kim had returned to his post at ops.

"How are things down in Engineering?" Paris asked as he joined Kim at his post.

"Fine. As long as Torres doesn't strangle Seepa. Tuvok was standing between them when I left." Kim shook his head and his slightly fluffed, black hair. "Where did the captain find her?"

Paris leaned on the ops station. "I guess in a bar. That's where Chakotay said he found them." Kim picked up a small, silvery oblong from his console. A glowing, filament diagram of a scan of it's innards rotated on an ops screen. "What's that?"

"It's a quantum level transducer from the planet. It's one of the things that Captain Janeway brought back. I was just checking it for compatibility with our own systems."

Paris shrugged. The only thing he knew about quantum level transducers was that they went into warp control systems and that on the Starfleet varieties they had asymmetrical plugs that could only be inserted in one particular way.

"Is it?"

"Well," Kim qualified. "More or less. We'll have to make an adapter for them to work for us." Kim hefted it, about the size of an angular, metallic cucumber, but much heavier. "Seepa says they're 'divine'," Kim quoted in a fair imitation of their visitor. Paris smiled.

Paris smiled. "She probably sleeps with them." This statement produced a slight blush from Kim and Paris wondered if Seepa hadn't talked about doing just that.

"How's the Captain?" Kim changed the subject.

"Oh, fine. Sleeping it off in Sickbay." Paris smiled. "Just don't expect any sympathy from the doctor if you ever need any similar attention." Paris patted Kim on the shoulder and left him to his work.

Paris took the helm from Ensign Ialo, who'd filled in for him when he'd left to pick up the captain. Nothing much had changed except for a request from the planet for them alter their orbit to accommodate some extra orbital traffic. Sitting in the best seat in the house, as Paris always thought of it, he checked the comm logs.

Awhile later, Commander Chakotay, looking crisp and relaxed, returned to the bridge. He surveyed the duty stations, casually circling the room, at ease amidst the calm, gray-metal, and un-scented efficiency. Tom Paris clicked something off his screen as he checked the conn, but he didn't ask about it. Satisfied, he settled in the command chair and called Engineering, Janeway's chair empty on his right.

Someone from engineering brought more components for Kim to look at and Kim sent down the one he'd already analyzed. Neelix returned his small ship to _Voyager_, having gotten all the repairs and replacement parts he could use. The Talaxian also promised over the com that he'd brought back some lovely desserts and pickled vegetables that he was sure Seepa and the captain would enjoy. And they started getting messages from the planet for Seepa.

Chakotay got up from the command chair and went up to Kim's station after the ensign answered the fifth one.

"I think Neelix told them where she is," Kim grumbled about the sudden message traffic. He didn't bother calling down to Engineering this time. Seepa had already told him three times that she'd come up to get them.

"She told a few dozen people herself while we were on the surface." Chakotay mentioned the long walk to the shuttle landing area.

"Commander, I'm not an answering service," the junior ensign half complained, half pleaded. He tapped the message into a file and off of his screen. Chakotay noticed the modules that he'd been analyzing.

"Any luck with these?" Chakotay picked one up. Heavy and solid the sleek, silvered device fit neatly in his large palm. His fingers curled around it's molded casing.

"I think it'll work, but we'll need a few dozen more of them." A prototype diagram for an adapter glowed on Kim's screen, several of the printed specs under it were question marks.

"Hmm, I'll tell the captain. From what I understand, they're fairly standard for the technology in the systems around here. Have you sent this to Engineering?"

"Yeah." Kim nodded. "But they're a little busy. _She's_ still down there." Chakotay smiled, remembering Torres's curt, short-tempered reply when he'd asked for her status. But while Seepa was down there, she wasn't up where he was.

"Well, I haven't heard any explosions, yet. I'd better go see what's going on down there." Chakotay nodded to Kim and went to the turbolift.

When he strolled into the lower, main area of _Voyager_'s Engineering room, it looked much the same as it always did with technicians at the stations along the walls. The warp core thrummed the ship's power at the far end of the room. Two people on the catwalk above watched the knot of people at the primary warp drive controls. The commander crossed the room to them. Neelix was serving hors d'oeuvres.

"How did you do that?" Lieutenant Torres bent over the lines and indicators on the control board. Chakotay silently peered over her shoulder.

"Well, you just have to have the right touch, de—Lieutenant." Seepa snatched a lumpy treat from the tray Neelix held and popped it in her mouth. "Oh, that's wonderful," she said around the morsel and selected an orange and purple square.

Neelix beamed. Lieutenant Carey, a half eaten munchie held between thumb and forefinger, finished it quickly when he saw the senior officer. Tuvok, who had stayed with Seepa the entire time she'd been on _Voyager_, stoically raised an eyebrow as if questioning why the first officer's presence, and not the ship's security chief's, would suddenly make Carey think of protocol.

"Things going well?" Torres whirled about, almost running into the commander. The snarl in her dark eyes faded, her eyes traveling to Seepa and then back to him.

"Yeah," she acknowledged. "Seepa just aligned one of the dilithium replacements in about a tenth of the time it would've taken any of us to do it."

"She's amazing, Commander," Lieutenant Carey perked up, trying to unobtrusively wipe his fingers on the black side of his uniform. Facing away from him, Torres rolled her eyes up as Carey heaped praise on Seepa's abilities.

"Commander." Torres touched his arm, her expression leading him away from the group. They stood next to the warp chamber, its powerful hum muffling their conversation.

"Is anything wrong?" Chakotay asked.

"No, except I wouldn't leave Seepa alone with the warp drive." She put her hand on her hip. "I never thought when I took this job that I'd ever have to worry the engine's virginity."

Chakotay smiled, recalling Seepa's sensual pleasure with the artificial gravity. She cocked her head back at him. Janeway had been determined for Seepa, with her unique abilities, to meet her chief engineer, obviously underestimating Seepa's other qualities.

"Chakotay, tell me one thing. We dropped everything for three hours when we couldn't find the captain. And all along, she was in a bar down on the planet, getting drunk," Torres pointed, "with her?"

Chakotay pondered for a moment. Actually, from listening to them all that time on the planet, he knew that Janeway and Seepa had met at the spaceport administrator's office, gone shopping, and then gone to the bar and gotten drunk. Details, details.

"Yeah," he answered, without mentioning the specifics.

Torres put her hand to her furrowed, Klingon forehead, her fingers touching the short, thick black hair far back from her temple as if she might be getting a headache. "Must be a Starfleet procedure I'm not familiar with."

"Yeah." He nodded back, serenely pleased with Torres' sarcastic synopsis.

"Lieutenant! Commander!" Seepa's call distracted them. She bounced up from her seat, her hands fluttering, her body jingling. Torres clinched her shoulders.

"What?" the engineer asked. Neelix, and Tuvok followed Seepa. Neelix offered his tray of delicacies to Chakotay, but the Maquis officer held up a hand, turning down the snack.

"Where _is_ Janeway? I haven't seen her in ages." Seepa wagged her head, her piled, pink hair trembled slightly.

"Uh, she wasn't feeling well. She's resting in Sickbay." Chakotay made the excuses for the captain.

"Oh, that's just perfect, dear." she patted his arm. "Janeway wanted me to go to this Sickbay place anyway, and have this doctor person scan me or something."

"It would be advantages for us to analyze her...abilities, Commander," Tuvok agreed.

"Of course it would be!"

Seepa's hand swatted the Vulcan's arm, producing a greatly put upon expression from him. Chakotay enjoyed seeing that his perfect formality could be dented. Their eyes made contact for the briefest second and Tuvok's face resumed it's calm neutrality.

"I _love_ being scanned. Where is it?"

They left Engineering together, Tuvok, Chakotay and Seepa with Neelix and his tray. Torres's farewell grin told Chakotay that Seepa was now his problem. But Carey looked sadly after them.

The doctor and Kes looked up from whatever they were working on when they entered. Chakotay and Tuvok's eyes went immediately to the examination table, where Captain Janeway still lay asleep, now covered with a blue sheet. Seepa, arms up, made a small circle in the main room. The doctor looked curiously at them.

"Well, what do we have here?" He approached.

Zzzzzzztttttt!

The doctor fragmented. Standing in place, the forward part of him broke up into unreal bits.

He jumped back and his body reformed. He stared back, his eyes wide and appalled.

"Doctor?" Kes looked from him to the new arrivals and back to the doctor. Her hand on his arm told the Ocampa that he was now solid again. "What happened?"

Uncharacteristically unsure, the self-important medical program extended an arm toward Seepa.

Zzzz-zzttt!

The hand disintegrated. The doctor snatched it back and shook his arm and the re-claimed hand as if stung. Tuvok raised a possibly amused, dark eyebrow.

"Interesting," the Vulcan noted. "Seepa's force field appears to be interfering with the doctor's holographic projectors."

"Force field?" The doctor zeroed in on the pink-haired woman with disdain. "How dare you bring a force field into my Sickbay. I demand that you turn it off immediately."

Seepa put a hand to her silver covered chest, her jeweled fingers and thumbs spread wide, her mouth open in over-acted shock. "_Sorry_, but I don't have an off switch. Do you live here?"

"Uh," Chakotay stepped forward. "Seepa's force field is, uh, biological. That's why she's here. We were hoping you could do an analysis of it."

"Oh, that and to see Janeway." Seepa lifted up her head, looking about again, and this time spotting the captain, lying on the examination table. The doctor headed her off.

"Now wait just a minute—!"

Zzzzz-zztt-zzTTTT!

The doctor disintegrated. Seepa jumped back, her face and painted eyes grimacing, her pink teeth bared. Apparently the doctor's holographic projectors weren't doing her any good either.

The doctor, now whole again, supported by Kes, drew back, breathing rapidly though Chakotay could not imagine why since he was only a hologram.

"Now see here," the doctor threatened while still drawing back. "I will not have you disturbing my patient, or disrupting this Sickbay. If you don't have a medical reason for being here I shall have to ask you to leave." The object of his disdain put her hands on her hips and shook her head toward Tuvok and Chakotay.

"Well, I don't know what else I can do. I'm holding it in as well as I can. If I suck it in any more, I'll implode."

"Uh, perhaps I could help."

Kes stepped forward, incidentally getting between Seepa and the doctor. Likewise, Tuvok advanced on Seepa's other flank, getting between her and the captain, who hadn't stirred at all during the commotion. The Vulcan glanced at the monitor over her head to confirm her status before casting his eyes back to their guest. Kes lowered and raised a tricorder before Seepa's body, scanning her while the doctor tried to look at the readings without getting any closer than a meter away from her.

"This is amazing," Kes breathed, her pale, blue eyes wide with wonder. Neelix, still holding his hors d'oeuvres tray, came around to her side. Seepa squirmed as if she were being tickled.

"Oh, isn't it," she said through her grin. She extended a finger and thumb toward the tricorder. "That's an interesting little box. Does it have any higher settings?"

"Oh!" Kes held up the tricorder. "It's stopped working." Some of the indicator lights had gone out, others blinked rapidly and the display had gone blank.

"Hmmm, looks like it might be overloaded," Neelix diagnosed. He took the tricorder, gave Kes his hors d'oeuvres tray and they both peered carefully at the device.

"She's probably fused the sensor emitter," the doctor grumbled upwards toward the ceiling. "Kes, use one of the biobed's sensors, and set the monitor for a class 9 humanoid."

Seepa looked to where the doctor had pointed and exclaimed, "Ooh, for me?" her jeweled hand spread on the front of her silver outfit. Then her eyes went back to where Chakotay and Tuvok stood between her and where the captain lay asleep. Tuvok's sensitive, pointed ears could hear her slow breathing behind him, the faint muffle of her heartbeat. In spite of all the noise, Janeway hadn't stirred. The security chief serenely looked back at their guest and she surprised him by making eye contact with him. He searched for hostile intent, but saw none, nor did his telepathic senses rouse from her look. But she communicated something intangibly thoughtful to him, neither threat nor challenge, just the knowledge that she did indeed _think_. Up until that moment, Tuvok had assumed that this was optional for her.

Again seeing that curious pause in her, Chakotay looked from Seepa to Tuvok where it was mirrored in the Vulcan's furrowed brows. Then his gaze went back to Janeway, still peacefully asleep behind him, little stray tangles of hair framed her face. Someone, probably Kes, had unbound her hair and it lay in a brown mass around her head. Chakotay caught himself staring and he turned away.

Seepa was looking at him now.

"It's been _ages_ since I've ever been that fragile." Her eyes looked past the two officers to the captain. She fluttered a hand at both of them. "You two are quite a pair of protectors." Smiling, she leaned toward them. "It's all right. I know I'm a bad influence." Returning her smile to Kes and Neelix, she cheerfully mounted and lay down on the biobed with the doctor supervising from a distance.

Nonplussed, Tuvok watched the examination commence. Seepa's sudden shift in mannerisms implied concealment, though he could not imagine what. Commander Chakotay's smile at him implied that the Human had derived some information from her, but the security chief thought it unlikely that he would have been able to draw any conclusions. They had both seen the same thing, but Tuvok remained unenlightened.

"Well if you don't need me Mister Tuvok, I'll return to the bridge," Chakotay said to him. Tuvok nodded toward the first officer and he left.

The Vulcan quietly observed the examination. Kes performed most of the scans. The doctor gave orders and observed the results from the computer terminal on his desk, in his office, while Neelix offered advice and an occasional snack.

Seepa's appetite mystified Tuvok. In the time she'd been on _Voyager_ he'd seen her consume enough to make up two meals. He hadn't seen her go more than 24 minutes without eating something. Yet she was nearly as petite as Janeway and hadn't needed a restroom. Where did it go to? He went over to the doctor and inquired about this.

"She doesn't consume food to sustain her body, it all goes into her force fields," the doctor informed him while hardly looking away from the glowing information on his screen.

Tuvok raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. I am surprised that she could derive that much energy from food." Seepa plucked a green cube from Neelix's nearly empty tray, the Talaxian's spotted cheeks glowing with pride.

"Well you couldn't, Lieutenant. But Seepa's digestive processes are nuclear, not chemical. In fact," the doctor looked closely at the test results, his hands quickly tapped commands at his terminal and he asked Kes for a different setting on the micro-life signs sensors. Tuvok peered over his shoulder and bald dome as he worked. "She actually breaks matter down into energy. No wonder we can't get a direct scan on her internally. The field strength in her abdomen must be incredible," the doctor commented. Tuvok wondered why a hologram would be programmed to talk to himself.

"I was unaware that such modifications were possible for a humanoid."

"It looks as if the initial alterations were done with bionics." The doctor's finger pointed out some places on a yellow diagram. "But those components have long since become inactive and literally disintegrated."

"Then her condition is progressive?"

"Very, very slowly. I'd say it's taken her nearly 4,500 years to metamorphose this far. Originally, Seepa was probably a class 2 humanoid, though it's fairly difficult to tell from this, there's very little of her original tissue structure left to go on." The doctor made an adjustment at his terminal.

Tuvok's eyes widened at what the doctor had just told him. "4,500...years?"

"More or less." The doctor finally turned and looked up at him. "Now if you don't mind, Lieutenant, I have a lot work to do." He turned back to his terminal.

Tuvok observed his work for a few moments. The security chief didn't have any medical training beyond standard Starfleet first aid, but he was very good at filtering out the parts and words that he did understand and using them.

Having gained as much knowledge as he could there, Tuvok left the office and observed their guest. Seepa chatted with Kes about the effect that different hair styles had on particle beams. Her towering, pink hair reflected the discharge of most energy weapons and Tuvok mentally noted the possible security risk. Kes would stop her work whenever Seepa squirmed and 'ooh'ed over a new scan. Apparently the medical monitors were quite enjoyable for her.

**

* * *

- - - End Part 3**


	4. Chapter 4

**FRIENDS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 4**

Still observing, Tuvok went over to where Janeway lay. She had shifted position slightly, but the monitors showed that she remained very deeply asleep. Tuvok wondered if it was an effect of the intoxication or perhaps the doctor had sedated her.

The captain's behavior in this incident also puzzled him. Tuvok knew Janeway to be quite social in interacting with others, but he had never known her to do anything like this, certainly not while on duty, and not while they were on this mission, trapped out in the Delta Quadrant. Had she known everything about Seepa's nature and longevity? Probably. Seepa seemed to be concealing nothing about that, and it would establish Janeway's scientific curiosity about the woman.

Seepa's giggle caught the contemplative Vulcan's attention. Kes laughed with her. Seepa seemed to display none of the accumulated wisdom that might be expected from a being who had been alive when Tuvok's own people were violent, emotional savages. At least, she didn't most of the time.

More noise and Tuvok turned to see Seepa getting up and preparing to leave. Kes picked up a bracelet that came off as she climbed down off the biobed. She admired it, platinum and silver twined together.

"Oh, take it," Seepa invited, smiling. Kes shook her head and offered it back.

"Oh no, I couldn't."

"Take it. I have more." She showed off the dozen others on her arms. "It would look fabulous on you, dear. You're like Janeway. You don't have anything on at all except for that comm link pin you've got on."

"Starfleet regulations don't allow for jewelry."

Seepa waved a hand, jingling her bracelets. "You're not in uniform." Kes modestly bowed her pale head, looking down at her short, blue dress. "You and Neelix are the only ones I've seen here who aren't wearing one of those black things." She waved at the pastel plaid pantsuit on Neelix's stocky body. "Try it on."

Encouraged by Neelix's supportive smile, Kes slid it onto her slender wrist.

"Thank-you."

"Of course, you can't wear that on duty in Sickbay," the doctor reminded. He had come out of his office and stood near, though still keeping two meters between himself and Seepa.

"Ugh." Seepa put her hands on her hips, as if there were no hope for these people. "Well, I'd better go see what they were calling me about. Where's Ensign Kim?" Tuvok escorted her out.

"Finally," the doctor muttered, exasperated. Kes slid the bracelet off and gave it to Neelix to keep for her. "Now maybe things can get back to normal." He went over to the captain. "I'll need a hypospray, Kes." She hurried to get one and handed it to him.

"Is there anything I can do?" Neelix asked.

"Yes." The doctor looked back at him. "You can get a glass of water."

"One glass of water, coming up." Neelix hurried to his errand, delighted to be put to service.

The doctor pressed the hypospray to his patient's neck. A few seconds later Janeway's eyes fluttered open.

Bright lights loomed over her. And then a bald head. Janeway blinked and stared, disoriented.

"Aah, feeling better now?" the ship's holographic doctor greeted her.

What was she doing in Sickbay? For a moment, she thought there had been some kind of accident. Her mouth was dry and tasted horrible and she felt queasy and light-headed. She lifted her head and it throbbed. She put it down again.

"Captain?" Janeway felt a light touch at her shoulder and she looked up at Kes. "How do you feel?" The captain remembered coming in, with Tuvok and Chakotay...no, Paris and Chakotay, and she remembered that she hadn't intended to stay.

"Not very well," she answered. "A little dizzy."

"Really?" the doctor commented from above. "Now, I wonder why that would be?"

Janeway closed her eyes. Oh no, he's going to make a show of it. Her unwellness and his cheerfulness had as much to do with retribution as with what she'd had to drink.

"I'm not the doctor," she informed him, hoping that if she lay quietly, she could get this over with. She felt a hypospray at her neck. A moment later a cool flush washed over her and her head cleared remarkably.

"Well, you're more or less whole. Considering," he pronounced. So, who had programmed him for self-righteousness?

"Thank you, Doctor." She lifted her head and managed to sit up this time, a sheet falling down from her. She took a deep breath, continuing to feel better, and pushed her long, reddish-brown hair back; it was everywhere, clinging to her face and neck. Then she put a hand to her throat.

"Ah, Mister Neelix," the doctor said beside her.

"Captain." Neelix was suddenly there, close enough to smell what he'd been making in his kitchen and holding a glass up to her chin.

"Thank-you."

She drank, while Neelix supervised. Then she sniffed, touching her nose to her sleeve and the scent of stale flowers still clinging to it. Oh, why had she tried that? She let Neelix take back the glass. She pushed the sheet away and slid her legs off the examination table. This time Kes was at her side to help. After a moment of dizziness, she felt much better standing.

"There, I think you'll live," The doctor said behind her, still cheerful on the other side of the examination table.

"Thank-you. But next time, Doctor, I'd recommend that you use a more expedient remedy."

"Ah yes. Next time," the doctor speculated. "Will you arrange to be carried into Sickbay? Next time?"

Janeway didn't turn around. There was no point in arguing with a sanctimonious hologram. She tapped her communicator.

"Janeway to Bridge."

"Chakotay here." Thankfully, he didn't ask her how she was feeling.

"Status."

"All ship's systems are fine. And Seepa's up here." A list of things that she'd intended to do with Seepa flashed across Janeway's mind and she wondered how long she'd been out in Sickbay.

"I trust you're showing her around, Commander."

"Yes, Captain." There was a pause long enough for Janeway to wonder what Chakotay was looking at, or what Seepa was doing. "She did ask about you, when you'd be able to rejoin us."

"Thank-you, Commander. I'll be right up." She pushed her hair back again. "In about twenty minutes. Janeway out." She looked back at the doctor. "I take it, I can leave." He gestured back generously.

"As long as I won't see you back here too soon."

"Fine. I'm going to my quarters to freshen up."

"Would you like me to go with you?" Kes offered. Neelix, on her other side, offered his support as well.

"No, thank-you. I'll be fine." They edged away from her, Neelix, it seemed, a little reluctantly.

"We got some very interesting scans from Seepa when she was here." Kes held a folded tricorder in her hands.

"Really?" Janeway started to ask about it, but then curbed her curiosity, pushing her hair back, again, away from her face. The scans could wait, though she did wonder if Seepa enjoyed medical scans as well as artificial gravity. It had seemed like every little energy field tickled her.

She left by herself. In the corridor, she gathered a few quick stares from the crew members she passed. Feeling a bit out of uniform—which she was with her hair down over her shoulders and hanging down her back—the captain kept her face sternly neutral. She resisted the urge to push her hair back again and drawing attention to it. At the turbolift, the door opened and a Maquis crew member exited, not paying much attention, he almost ran into her. His expression changed from annoyance to wide eyed shock. She glowered up at him and he swiftly slid out of her way and she took the lift and made it to her cabin without encountering anyone else.

Once there, she went to the lavatory, undressed and showered. The steamy water washed away the sticky film of old sweat on her skin and the bad taste in her mouth. She limited herself to two minutes and shut the water off. She toweled herself off and dried the dampness from her hair. There wasn't enough time for washing it, so she settled for brushing it out.

In her bedroom, she got out clean clothes, partially dressed and then rolled her hair up and fixed it in place in her usual bun. Then she put on a uniform and a fresh pair of boots. Finished, she checked her appearance in the mirror once more before leaving.

More quick stares passed her in the corridor. She ignored them since no one seemed inclined to look for more than a second before looking away. There wasn't anything else she could do about the obvious quick spread of gossip, because she knew she had only herself to blame.

"Bridge," she ordered in the turbolift.

She straightened her uniform, and herself. If she'd had a mirror with her, she would have checked her appearance one more time. The doors opened and she stepped out into the metallic grays of her bridge.

Tuvok, at his station on her right nodded, as he always did, toward her as she entered. She gratefully returned it and Tuvok went back to his work. Paris sat at the helm and peered back in her direction.

Janeway spotted the top of Seepa's pink hair amidst a knot of people over at the Ops station on her left. It was much pinker in normal light than she remembered it being on the planet. She bit her lip as she realized the extent of her poor judgement. She'd had a wonderful afternoon with Seepa. Meeting a humanoid of her age and experience was rare enough, but it just astonished Janeway that they'd gotten along so well, like old friends. After lunch, it had seemed natural that this camaraderie would translate to her officers when they got back to the ship. But in the cool, sober, lights of the bridge, this obviously wasn't true.

Poor Ensign Kim looked a little frazzled and was eying Seepa like a dreaded aunt. Parsons and Ialo didn't look much better. And Torres...the short-tempered Klingon's mouth was set in a harsh line and Commander Chakotay seemed to be conspicuously standing between her and Seepa. His eyes found her and smiled back. For a moment she felt a bit guilty, as if she'd arrived late and he'd been covering for her. She had to admit that he'd been doing just that, here and on the planet, and especially in the shuttle bay. She would have to thank him and Tuvok for keeping her in line.

"Oh, Janeway!" Seepa emerged from the people who clustered around the ops station. "_Disaster_ has struck!"

Hands up, palms out in distress, Seepa's flashy, chrome silver came at her as she crossed the upper deck of the bridge. Janeway had to admit that Seepa looked quite ghastly in normal light, her skin unnaturally pale and smooth. Her small teeth, flashed pink as she chattered and her hair was such a strong shade of pink, without a trace of blond or gray in it at all, that it practically glowed.

"What happened?" Janeway went over to them.

"Yorgal got my ship ready early and those Ee'Roos are on me about taking their groostofs to their mother-home." Seepa flung the words out like a chore. "And really, _really_, I don't think I can put them off. Competition's a bit stiff around here." Chakotay came away from the group behind Seepa's piled, pink hair.

"This Yorgal is bringing the ship and cargo to dock with _Voyager_, Captain. Seepa can take her ship on and we can beam Yorgal back down to Zabos."

"Oh, he's just _dying_ to try it." Seepa leaned close. "But you'd better check his pockets before he leaves. He's a little too likely to liberate some things while he's here."

"Indeed?" Tuvok, who had silently come over from his station, raised a cool eyebrow as he took up a stance behind the captain.

Janeway glanced back at him before turning back to Seepa. "How long before Seepa's ship arrives, Commander?"

Chakotay shrugged. "About twenty minutes. Yorgal was having the cargo loaded when we spoke to him."

"Ugh, not much time for anything, really." Seepa spread her hands out. "But I did see that warp thing of yours. Lieutenant Torres showed it to me." Still standing next to Ensign Kin, Torres put a hand on her hip, a 'yeah, sure' expression on her face and in her body language. "That person with Neelix..."

"Kes," Janeway supplied the name.

"Did those scan things you wanted," Seepa patted Janeway's arm, the slight heat and tingle of her force field connecting only briefly through the sleeve of her uniform. "It was divine." She grinned the same way she did when the waiter on the planet had brought them the first six courses of their lunch. "And Chakotay showed me everything here." She waved her hands, her bracelets jingling. The Commander smiled pleasantly down at her. "Oh." One hand flew to her face. "I didn't see any of those replicator things."

"Well, there's one in my office." She gestured toward her ready room door, on the other side of the bridge. "There's still time to look at it. Commander, if you don't need me for anything, we'll be in my ready room. You have the bridge."

Chakotay watched them cross the bridge and disappear into the captain's ready room, leaving him holding the bag—figuratively at least—again. Tom Paris, at the con, turned his head from the closed door back to the view screen, an amused smirk on his face. The eyes of the other personnel on the bridge traveled to that door before returning to duty stations as well. Next to him, Tuvok looked toward the ready room as well, his dark brows slightly furrowed in either surprise or speculation. It was hard to tell with Tuvok. It seemed odd for the commander to think so, but the bridge was suddenly rendered so ordinary without Seepa's flashy pink and silver influence.

"Commander." Chakotay turned around to B'Elanna Torres. "You're not going to just let them go like that?"

"You want to suggest stopping them?"

Torres had had enough. Why were they letting this woman all over the ship? She left Kim and stalked over to the two senior officers.

"How do we know she isn't going to do something? She's a walking force field. There's no telling what she could do."

Chakotay shrugged. "Tuvok's been with her ever since she came on board. What's your opinion?"

The security chief's dark face frowned. Following her around all this time must have really gotten to him if he were showing that much expression, Chakotay thought.

"Seepa's actions may best be described as...illogical, even irrational, but I have observed no hostile intent from her. If she had intended to do us harm, she would have had ample opportunity when she was aligning the dilithium chamber in engineering. And her assistance, while disruptive to standard Starfleet procedures, has been, for the most part, beneficial."

Tuvok was right, and Torres didn't like it. "Well, don't you think that maybe, she's not interested in the ship. What about the captain? Look at the way she's acting? Don't you think maybe Seepa's exerting some kind of alien influence on her." Torres gestured toward the ready room, her brow ridges accenting her angry dissatisfaction up at them.

Chakotay pursed his lips and looked to Tuvok again. Tuvok had been Janeway's security officer for over four years, knowing her much longer than the two Maquis. The Vulcan almost sighed.

"While I have never known Captain Janeway to violate protocol this severely before, while on duty, her recent actions have not been sufficiently atypical to warrant such an assumption."

Chakotay's brows rose, the 'while on duty' qualifier piquing his interest. Torres paused as well at this comment. Had Janeway ever done this before? Tuvok's cool return expression told them that if she had, the story would not be told by him. And, in truth, Chakotay didn't feel like he needed to hear it. But Torres still looked unsatisfied that there wasn't some immediate threat that would justify tossing Seepa off the ship.

"I think the captain and Seepa just get along well together." Chakotay concluded. "It happens sometimes. My people call it kas-jah. Two people meet, and they're immediately friends," he glanced toward Tuvok, "family," and then back to Torres, "brothers. Or in this case, sisters."

"The captain...and Seepa?" Torres' disgust suggested that she was thinking that he meant a physical type of sisterhood that he was not implying.

"They're not attracted to each other _that_ way, B'Elanna," he corrected.

Tuvok gave this serious consideration. "Given the limited amount of time that they were together on the planet, I believe that you are over-stating the situation, Commander—"

"I hope so," Torres interrupted.

"But I have seen nothing to refute it, either. And I have seen evidence that Seepa is an individual of considerably more depth than she initially projects."

"They like to talk and they have a lot of things to say to each other. And there aren't a lot people for the captain to talk to."

His nod toward Tuvok—who was the closest that Janeway had to a confidant on the ship—might have been taken as an insult, but the practically minded Vulcan considered this statement along with all the others.

"I suppose she got a little carried away," Chakotay admitted. "But maybe this was the right time for it. Sometimes a person just needs to let off a little steam." Torres looked like she was about to say something, but held it back. "I think this is just the way Captain Janeway does it. She just doesn't need to break any furniture to do it."

The half-Klingon, half-Human engineer's mouth tightened at his reminder of her temper.

"How's the manifest for the supplies we're taking on?" Chakotay returned to ship's business.

'We're still working on it. We're still not sure what we're getting, and Yorgal's bringing some things with him with Seepa's ship. I'll let you know when we're finished."

Grumbling, Torres went back to Harry Kim's station. Tuvok went back to his station and Chakotay stepped down to his command chair to record a log entry. The little knot of senior officers dispersed, the other crew members immediately seemed more attentive to their work.

Five minutes went by.

Ten minutes went by.

Thirteen point 7 minutes went by. Torres and Kim finished all they could on the manifest and, tired of waiting, Torres left ops and stepped down to the command level.

"What the hell are they doing in there?"

Thumb pointed toward Janeway's ready room, she stood over Chakotay. An overtly curious Kim stood behind her.

Chakotay raised an eyebrow. "Nothing hazardous, I assume." Torres put a hand on her hip, not sharing the first officer's native patience.

"Well, Yorgal is almost here. Shouldn't one of us get them?"

Chakotay sat back in his command chair and rubbed his chin. Then he glanced at Janeway's empty chair on his right. Torres obviously could have called Janeway herself with the news. He got up. Tuvok silently joined them at the gray metal door to the captain's ready room.

**

* * *

- - - End Part 4**


	5. Chapter 5

**FRIENDS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 5**

They heard both women's voices as the door slid open. They entered. Torres stared, open mouthed at the captain's desk. Unnoticed behind them, Harry Kim peeked around them at the scene.

Spread out on the half-circle desk must have been a week's worth of replicator rations in coffee, cake, chocolate and pie. Chakotay, next to Torres, smiled at the familiarity of the setup, curiously similar to mess on the bar on the planet where he'd found Janeway that afternoon.

"Oh, did Yorgal get here already?" Seepa complained, looking up from Janeway's computer terminal. With the rest of the large room—the conference area where the replicator, the sofa, table and potted plants were—empty, they sat shoulder to shoulder in two chairs crammed behind the desk.

"Yes, Commander?" the captain asked while Seepa plucked a spherical cake from a tray on the desk and popped in her mouth, her lips fondling the treat for a moment before it disappeared.

"Seepa's ship is ready to dock with _Voyager_. We thought you might like to meet it."

"And see me off of this one it looks like," Seepa said out of the side of her mouth, fluttering a hand at Tuvok, Chakotay and Torres (with Kim just behind them). Janeway and Seepa looked at each other.

"Yorgal's a bit sleazy, but he really can be too efficient sometimes with space ships. I think they're the only things he really loves."

"Very well, Commander. We'll be right there." Janeway noticed Torres still staring at the desk like a Klingon expecting to enter to a fight and ending up at a tea party. "Oh, have something, please. We're not going to be able to finish it, now."

"Why not?" Torres randomly picked up something and took a bite out of it.

"Thank you, Captain." Chakotay helped himself to a cup of coffee. Tuvok raised a single hand, politely declining.

"Oh, Janeway, I don't know how you _stand_ that horrible black stuff." Seepa scrunched up her face as Janeway took a sip from her own cup.

"It's an acquired taste."

Chakotay surveyed the selection of goodies, and picked out a chocolate cream to go with the coffee. A small one. Middle age—around the same time as when he noticed his first gray hairs—had made it disparagingly easy for him to gain weight, and because of that, he had long ago sworn off snacks, no matter how tempting. But, on the other hand, it would be foolish to pass up a free replicated dessert on the captain's rations. And Neelix's erratic cooking made it easy for him to cut back at the mess hall. He handed a plate of pie back to Kim. Defeated by the ridiculous, Torres rolled her eyes upward and looked for something harder to bite into.

Janeway and Seepa got up and came around the crowded desk.

"We'll be in the shuttle bay, Commander. You have the bridge." Janeway paused in the doorway, a parting glance cast toward the dessert remains. "Oh, and have someone take the rest of that down to the galley. Might as well not let it go to waste."

"I'll see to it." Chakotay raised his cup at her as they left. Tuvok right behind them. When they entered the turbolift, the security chief went with them.

"Well, it's a shame you have to leave so soon." Janeway patted Seepa's arm, on her sleeve, the silvery chrome suit she wore masked the usual tingling effect.

"Oh, I've been coming and going for so long now, it's hard to tell where I am anymore. But I'll remember this for awhile, dear." She patted Janeway's arm in return.

Janeway smiled back, but anything else she might say in return dried up. After they got to the shuttle bay, Seepa would leave and they would likely never see each other again. What could she say?

Next to her, Seepa had settled into looking over Tuvok, who stood apart from them in the lift. Seepa tapped her pale, smooth chin with her equally smooth fingertips as she first tilted her head to look at his perfectly polished boots and up the black pants of his uniform to the mustard-gold shoulders. A crisp, neat sentinel, only Tuvok's dark eyes acknowledged Seepa's scrutiny. When the lift stopped at the hangar deck, he waited for them to exit, before following.

"Yorgal!"

A stout, handsome male with metallic copper hair turned from the two crew members he'd been speaking to. Seepa's ship, already docked, occupied the center of attention in _Voyager_'s hangar. The ship's polished, chrome exterior reflected light in all directions, stirring up the normal shadowless lighting just enough to notice. It created patches of light and false shadows where they shouldn't have been.

The ship matched Seepa's outfit perfectly.

"Oh, Yorgal, you're just too _efficient_ sometimes." Seepa waved her hands in mock disgust, her silver bracelets jingling with the belts at her waist as she walked.

Yorgal grumbled something about gratitude, but Seepa sailed right past him and went to the open hatch of her ship. Janeway and Tuvok followed, leaving Yorgal and the two _Voyager_ crew behind.

The captain was surprised by the modest craft. Seepa's ship wasn't really much more than a shuttle craft, seemingly designed for only interplanetary, perhaps even orbital, travel, and now re-built for its owner's special needs. The portal of the hatch was peaked, allowing Seepa, and her tall hair, to enter without bending over. Even so, Janeway ducked her head as she entered, out of habit and from the memory of bumping her head on too many things inside Federation shuttles.

The interior was nothing more than one big room, slightly tapered at one end where the pilot's controls and one small view port were. In spite of the high ceiling, Janeway felt a little claustrophobic. It was like a big, dark box, with three pink chairs by the controls and boxes and boxes of Seepa's cargo filling more than half of it. And it was heavily scented with Seepa's favorite perfume. Tuvok, Janeway noticed, did not enter, but watched them from the hatch.

They went around the boxes and Seepa plopped down in front of the small square window and controls. Janeway sat next to her and, shocked, realized that none of the chair's, not even the pilot's seat, were fixed to the floor. But since Seepa generated her own gravity field, then the usual accommodations for acceleration would be superfluous. Janeway wondered what it would be like, piloting from a lawn chair, but she knew it was impossible for her. Seepa could not take passengers. The intensity and variations of the fields that she generated would kill any other living creature on the ship. Seepa had told her that a long time ago, a very clever engineer had tried to build a shielded box for her so that could transport small animals, but the power source for it had been too big to fit on the ship.

"Oh, Yorgal," Seepa grumbled and opened a compartment next to her knee. She took out a cloth and wiped the controls off, an antiseptic smell joining the pervasive floral scent of the ship. "He's a good engineer, but he forgets sometimes and leaves a film." Janeway leaned forward, hands in her lap, as Seepa tidied up. Seepa was very particular about dirt or residue, not that she ever had to worry about it much. Most particulates and biological substances didn't stand a chance against Seepa's everyday force fields.

Seepa finished and tossed the cloth back into its compartment. Then she looked back at the cargo, stacked behind them. "These Ee'Roos are really desperate to get this stuff to their home world. It's supposed to be sacred or something like that. Those are the best and the worst kind of customers. You should watch out for them," she advised.

"Seepa, we don't take cargo."

"You're out here in the middle of nowhere, Janeway, dear. Don't waste time on pride if it comes to that."

Janeway silently mulled the truth of that statement. Starfleet ships were _not_ ships of commerce. There were regulations governing necessary barter trade, especially for deep space explorers, but generally Starfleet relied on provisioning its ships well, and avoiding the problems that this kind of interaction could create.

Janeway loathed the idea of going to these regulations for her ship's survival. Tuvok would have called her feeling illogical—of course, _all_ feelings were illogical to Vulcans—but she strongly wanted to stay away from them as long as possible. Using her ship for trade, even under Starfleet regulation, would be just further acknowledgment that they were alone, far from home, in this part of the galaxy.

Seepa noticed her companion's long face. "Oh, it's not such a terrible thing. I've been doing it for millennia. You've got to do something with yourself if you're around as long as I am." Janeway's thoughts shifted away from her ship's longevity to Seepa's unusual condition.

"What's it like?" she asked. "To live so long, when you never expected to?"

Arms folded before her, Seepa sat still before answering. "It's like I'm always going to death rituals. I love being with people, but I can't bring myself to ever get to know them; I'm always remembering the ones who're gone. There are so many more of them." Her eyes went to Janeway's. "I'm not sorry you're leaving and not coming back. I don't have to worry about missing you the usual way." Her hands and bracelets silent, her introspection stretched on. "I never really get used to it. I suppose that's why I'm still around. So many of the others have just gotten tired of it all and gone on. Supposedly, if I just stop eating the fields will collapse and I'll be squeezed into some nether dimensions." Her hands flexed, hugging her middle. "I've heard some pretty convincing stories that it's supposed to be some higher form of existence, but I just can't get used to the idea of not being _me_," she confided.

Janeway remained silent in response, but they exchanged a look of understanding. Finally the moment of seriousness became too weighty for Seepa and her eyes flicked toward the open hatch and the ever present shadow partially blocking the light from the hangar bay, Tuvok. She leaned close.

"Does he always follow you around like that?"

Janeway grinned back. "It's his job, Seepa."

"Don't you get tired of him being around? Trying to listen in on what you're saying?"

"Oh, Tuvok can hear us from here." She raised her voice. "Can't you Mister Tuvok?"

"Perfectly, Captain."

"Those pointed ears aren't for nothing, you know." Janeway waved a hand back toward the Vulcan standing at parade rest at the open hatch.

For once, Seepa seemed speechless, her mouth opening in shock. Then it closed, her hand going up, covering her lips and she laughed. The captain joined her. Tuvok, by himself, raised an eyebrow. Humor was difficult enough to understand by itself, but the source of this mirth completely eluded him. His attention was drawn by a crew member's voice, speaking to Yorgal, who seemed overly curious about the contents of the shuttle bay. The wide door of the echoing bay opened and two of his people arrive. Tuvok went to them.

Janeway saw Tuvok's shadow leave and she knew she would have to leave as well. It seemed such a shame that Seepa couldn't stay, there was so much that they could learn from her. Then it suddenly dawned on the captain that she could prolong their time together by simply taking Seepa to her destination. Seepa was her own transportation, but she couldn't travel any faster than warp 4 or so. _Voyager_ could make her trip in a fraction of the time.

The captain frowned at her own self-indulgence. She simply could not justify a detour like that. Then _Voyager_ really would be playing the part of a cargo ship. She supposed that it might have seemed like a good idea over the green haze of lunch, but the memory of that seriously put upon expressions of her crew on the bridge told her that taking Seepa on would be stretching the captain's privilege too far.

And by Seepa's own admission, she was not a good passenger on any other ship but her own. On the planet, she'd told a string of tales about how badly she did on other people's ships; accidentally wiping control systems, interfering with the ship's shielding and such. She'd told one hysterical story about putting her hands into a cleansing slot in a restroom and inadvertently closing a circuit that caused the ship's VIP quarters, engine room and all the other restrooms to be flooded with salt water. Seepa did not belong on anybody's crew or passenger list.

"No point in dragging this out any more. Time to go." Seepa declared, and Janeway blushed that her thoughts were so obvious.

"I suppose it is," she agreed and they both got up and went to the hatch. Seepa sighed as she looked down at the well lit hangar bay where Tuvok dispatched Yorgal to the transporter room between two black and gold uniforms. Yorgal kept looking from one to the other of his unresponsive guards and then one last suspicious glare to Tuvok before he left. Seepa waved goodbye to him before turning back to her companion.

"I don't know what your people do for parting rituals, Janeway, dear, but whatever it is, I've seen it all." Janeway spread her arms in a 'how about a hug' gesture and they did. It was like hugging a perfumed, insulated power conduit for the captain. "You're so alive, Janeway. I wish I could still feel things when I touch them," Seepa whispered, quiet enough so that even Tuvok couldn't hear it.

Seepa's hands were on Janeway's back, one touching her collar and bare neck, but the captain knew that Seepa couldn't tell the difference between the uniform and skin. Nerve endings had been among the first things to go when her body was changed. That was one reason why a force field covered her skin, to prevent her from accidentally injuring herself since she had no sensation of touch to warn her. That and it also prevented her from irradiating the people around her.

"Aha! There you are!" The two women separated to find Neelix and with Kes entering the cargo bay. _Voyager_'s self appointed cook hustled forward with tray in hand. "I couldn't let you get away without letting you sample just one more of my specialties." The captain stepped back as Neelix climbed up into the hatchway.

"Oh, I'm _always_ ready to try something new." She savored a juicy morsel and then offered one to the captain. "They're divine." Janeway declined. She already knew that their tastes differed greatly. On Zabos they'd ended up sampling nearly everything edible for a Human on the menu trying to find some things that they both liked. Seepa had eaten the excess. Janeway couldn't imagine what it would be like, tasting everything through a force field, but Seepa had claimed to still be able to taste things—Janeway privately wondered about that since Seepa seemed to like everything. And with Neelix's cooking, there was an even chance that she wouldn't like them.

"Please, take them with you," Neelix offered and Seepa accepted, she put the tray on top of one of the cargo boxes and then hugged Neelix.

"Oh my!" Neelix exclaimed at the warmth and tingle of contact. "You must keep some lucky guy warm at night." He beamed at her.

"Oh, don't I wish."

No one but Janeway, and perhaps Kes, seemed to notice the edge of sadness in that admission. Neelix smiled happily in place for a few more seconds before he realized he was in the way and stepped down from the hatchway.

"I just wanted to say that it was a pleasure to meet you," Kes said up to woman with tall, pink hair. She wore the bracelet that Seepa had given her.

"Oh, it wasn't so bad meeting you, and your scanners." Kes smiled back. Seepa put her hand on the captain's. "I had a wonderful time. I never ask for anything more than that."

She turned and her silver outfit dimmed in the gloom of her ship as she made her way back to the controls. Janeway stepped down to the hangar deck and the three of them went to the door, Tuvok joining them. Neelix congratulated her on her choice of friends all the way to the turbolift.

On the bridge, Janeway and Tuvok returned to their stations. Seepa's ship was ready to leave. Sitting in the command chair, Janeway gave permission for launch.

"You look sorry to see her leave."

Janeway turned to her first officer, seated on her left. He inclined his head toward the view screen. She put her elbow on the arm of her chair closest to him and rested her chin on her hand.

"Yes, I am." Her fingers rubbed the underside of her chin before she lowered her hand. "There's so much out there that we don't know, so many experiences that we just don't have time for in the span of one lifetimes. But Seepa's been through so much...history. There would be so much we could learn from her."

"You might have asked her to come with us," Chakotay suggested, leaning toward her on the arm of his own command chair. Surprised, Janeway looked back at him carefully, but the expression on his pleasant, rounded face seemed quite serious. "She could be useful. And you seemed to get along well together," he added.

With a very amused smile in return, Janeway slowly shook her head. "I think Seepa would be the first one to tell you that she is not a team player. She's fun at parties, but not good in groups," she paraphrased Seepa's own description of herself.

The captain's eyes shifted to either side of them, to the others on the bridge, but no one seemed to be paying much attention. "Commander, I also wanted to...thank you for what you did on the planet today, and when we returned to the ship."

Chakotay gave a little shrug. "Just following regulations. I wasn't doing anything different from what I'd do for a friend. And I suppose you'd do the same for me."

"You think I'll ever have to, Commander?"

His eyes turned mischievous. "No."

"We're receiving a signal from Seepa's ship," Harry Kim announced. "She's leaving orbit."

"On screen," Janeway commanded. She stood, stepping forward into the command area, just behind Tom Paris's station. She felt Commander Chakotay just behind her.

On the main view screen, Seepa's ship glinted and spun over into space, away from the planet below. Most notable of all was the bright, glowing field surrounding the small craft. The gravity field that Seepa's life and body had been altered so long ago to produce. It was pink.

"Look at that." The captain smiled at the image.

"It's really something," Chakotay agreed.

"Yes." Janeway turned to him and then back to the screen, the departing ship on it. "She is."

**

* * *

o_o_o_o END o_o_o_o**

**Note:** This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in 1996, in _Delta Quadrant_ 3, a fanzine back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days of fan-fiction, when the internet was just taking off.

**Disclaimer:** All Trek characters and the universe belong to Paramount; I'm just playing in that sandbox.


End file.
